Journal Entry: June 2, 2009

It always surprises me to get that email from Facebook saying “Such-and-such confirmed you as a friend.” Usually that’s because of the “such-and-such” in question — mostly people I vaguely remember from high school who apparently remember me well enough to confirm. Weird.

I spent the weekend watching AB while T– was out of town, so you can anticipate a long and detailed blog post.

ThursdayThursday afternoon I got home from work a little early so that I could say goodbye to T– before she headed to Little Rock for a weekend scrapbooking with my mom and sisters. We got the car loaded, and then she tearfully took to the road.

I played with AB for half an hour or so, until she started claiming she was hungry, and then I made us dinner — PB and J for her, and PF and Changs for me (leftovers, that is). Then we were heading back to her room to play some more when she asked if we could go in the office (like the cats, she loves it simply because the door is always closed).

So I dragged T–‘s desk chair in there, squeezed it in next to mine at the desk, and put VeggieTales on the new big monitor. AB watched TV while I played Civ on the laptop. It was a fun hour and a half. After I put her to bed, I played some more Civ, and then went to bed at a reasonable hour (something I have difficulty remembering to do when I’m home alone).

Unfortunately, I couldn’t sleep. I was awake until about 2:00 before I finally drifted off.

FridayTired as I was, I probably would have slept through work on Friday, but AB wasn’t tired at all. She woke up at 6:30 and started banging on the door, loudly and insistently, while politely asking to be released. I could barely hear her through the banging, saying, “Let me out, please.”

I went to her door and told her she didn’t have to go to back to bed, but she had to stay in her room until 7:00. She didn’t like that information, but there’s not a lot she can do about it until she figures out child-proof doorknob covers.

So I hurried to get dressed and ready for work before 7:00, and then got AB fed before the babysitter showed up. Once she was there I rushed out the door and headed to work.

I got home a little after 5:00, and on the drive there I called up D– and K– and N–, as well as my brother-in-law who had his own two little bundles of joy in his sole care. In an effort to pool resources, we all met at McDonalds in Edmond and let the kids unleash their havoc on the play equipment there.

At one point AB and her cousin Sophy were fighting over a toy steering wheel and AB bit her hard, right on the chest (bizarre, I know). Jeff retrieved Sophy to comfort her and I got AB to chastise her, and as I was carrying her to a corner AB said, “Sophy’s crying.”

In my sternest dad voice I said, “She is. Do you know why?”

And AB nodded and said, “Annabelle tried to eat her.”

I didn’t laugh. Not at the time anyway.

We were there for an hour or so, then fled the noise of the place to regroup at my sister’s place for another half hour or so. I finally left at 8:00 so I could get home in time to put AB down to bed. D– came over, too.

Once she was in bed, D– made me watch King of Kong on Netflix while we played games in the office. When it was over, I retaliated by making him watch about three hours of Comedy Central Presents. It was 2:00 when he finally left and I went to bed.

SaturdayTired as I was, I probably would have slept through the morning Saturday, but AB wasn’t tired at all. She woke up at 6:30 and started banging on the door. I ignored her for as long as I could, but finally got up around 7:00.

We had breakfast and played some games in the living room, but she mostly divided her time between throwing weird little tantrums (falling on the ground wherever she was and crying softly), and crawling into my lap and cuddling up against me like she does when she’s scared. Or, more precisely, she spent the morning acting like she was sick. She’d spent the week playing with her cousin who we found out on Thursday probably had strep, so I was more and more certain as the morning wore on that AB had finally come down with it.

I had some errands that needed run, though, so I went up to Wal-Mart and AB perked up a little bit when she saw the fish in the tanks. She fought me a lot over who got to push the cart, though, and I learned the low-grade terror that is trying to keep track of a toddler at a busy Wal-Mart — especially with the sure knowledge that, if she decides to run, she can outrun you. She never actually bolted, but there were a couple of close calls.

We got what we needed, though, and then swung by B– and E–‘s place to borrow an extension ladder. I was supposed to take AB over to Toby’s place for the afternoon, so she could play with his kids while we did some programming. When she started throwing a fit in the car, though, I called him up and told him I was worried she was sick and she wasn’t behaving, and I just didn’t have the patience to deal with that all afternoon. He seemed to understand.

D– picked up some lunch for us, and then I put her down for a nap. I got some work done in the back yard, using B–‘s ladder to repair the broken swings, and then D– and I started up a multiplayer game of Civ. Around 3:30 AB woke up and came into the office, but all she did for about forty minutes was wander around crying. She didn’t want to be comforted, she didn’t want to watch any of her favorite TV shows or movies, she didn’t want a snack or a drink…she just cried. I checked her for a fever, but there was nothing. T– had told me she’d behaved like that earlier in the week, so we just waited it out.

I did call and cancel dinner plans with K– and N–, but after AB calmed down and I started trying to figure out what to make her for dinner, I called back and uncancelled. By the time we got over there, AB was perfectly fine, and she behaved pretty well while we were there. N– tried to put on The Fox and the Hound for her, but AB was much more interested in playing with baby Jason.

We stayed a little longer than I’d thought AB would allow, so it was forty minutes past her bedtime by the time we got home. I decided to postpone her bath, and just put her to bed. Then D– and I played Civ for three more hours, and got up to Cannons. We finished one war and he wisely suggested we call it a night before starting another. Thanks to that suggestion, I made it to bed by the comparably reasonable hour of 1:00.

SundayTired as I was, I probably would have slept through church Sunday, but AB wasn’t tired at all. She woke up at 6:30 and started banging on the door. I ignored her for as long as I could, but finally got up around 7:00.

I gave her some breakfast and turned on WordWorld for her, then I got cleaned up and dressed in a hurry. Then I gave her a much needed bath, and just finished getting her dressed in time to make it to Bible class.

At first she was really clingy, and knowing she’d been through a rough weekend without her mama I stuck around until the opportunity to ring a bell and the promise of goldfish crackers finally enticed her to take her spot at the table. Then I slipped off to the auditorium class only ten or fifteen minutes late.

Jeff joined us for the service, bringing his two girls with him, and we spent a few minutes commiserating. That went like this:

Me (exhausted): They are never allowed to do this again.Jeff (unsympathetic): You’ve only got one!

Afterward we went to Mazzio’s with K– and N– and D– joined us there. Then after lunch AB went down for a nap, I cleaned up the house a little anticipating T–‘s return, and then D– and I finished off our Civ game. We won it just before T– got home with dinner.

There were hugs all around, of course, and then while T– and AB were catching up I took a moment to finish some of the work on the nursery/office switch. Then AB went down for a nap, and T– and I spent a couple hours watching TV before heading to bed.

MondayMonday I had to go back to work, dang it all. I even ended up staying late, so it was almost six by the time I got home, and then I spent an hour on the elliptical machine. At seven T– had dinner ready for us — barbecue sandwiches, which were fantastic. Then we took a walk up to the Bolings’ house — friends from church — and spent a while talking with them. By the time we got home it was AB’s bedtime, but she stayed up a while longer to get a bath.

After that, T– and I spent the rest of the evening watching through the Jay Leno/Conan O’Brien transition episodes. That was pretty fun. Then I stayed up late playing Civ, but with T– back home and my life back in order, “late” was only 11:30.